Dreaded Valentine’s Day (or Singles Awareness Day for you bitter types) has come and gone, leading to the next big celebration: St Patricks Day. 

 I am 3/4 Irish, and to that happy circumstance I owe my Gaelic addiction to freedom….as well as my wit, charm and good looks.  I am proud of that heritage, from the ring bearing the coat of arms for Clan O’Boyle, passed to me from my mother, to the celtic cross tatooed on my back.  That being said, I should be looking forward to the one day of the year that everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY becomes Irish for the day.  But to me the celebration warrants only a shake of the head, and a twinge of disgust.

 Firstly, the holy day falls in the middle of lent, the time where Roman Catholics fast and abstain in memoriam of the Passion of Christ and in preperation for Easter.  In Ireland, the day was always marked with solemnity, families went to Mass.  The American version is nothing more than an Irish mardi gras, where the feast day of the Patron Saint of Ireland is marked with drunken debauchery. 

Secondly, and this may strike a nitpicky note but I feel it imperative nonetheless, everyone is Irish on St Patty’s, but who understands what it means to be Irish?  Does anyone remember or care to remember the rivers of blood Erin wept? Or the potato famine that drove so many from their homes, testified to by the mass graves around Skibbereen, where almost ten thousand from that area alone are buried? Just today Dwight Sheley,  who is a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, an Irish civic and social organization proudly declared  in regards to the local Irish festival held this weekend: “There ain’t no potato famine around here”.  In all honesty, that comment made me sick.

From Paddy’s Lament by Thomas Gallagher:

“In Skibbereen, when the coffins ran out and whole families continued to die, monster graves, called by the people “the pits,” were dug in the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. The dead were dropped coffinless, without mourning or ceremony, into these pits…. Each pit was kept open for days,sometimes for as long as a week…. Then came another corpse and a fresh sprinkling of sawdust, until the pit received its full complement of tenants and was covered over with dirt. In a year and a half, a whole generation of Skibbereen’s people was buried in these pits…a place where today a visitor enters, becomes rapt in its lonely seclusion, and thinks with sorrow and indignation of its dark and terrible history.”

I wonder if, during say…..a Chinese New Year celebration, anyone would have the audacity to declare at the start of the festivities: “There ain’t no tanks crushing protesters around here”, and receive laughter and applause?  In the early years of the South, Irish were banned from the state of Georgia.  Now, we have a hypocritical parade and festival, not because we have so many immagrants or descendants of immigrants, but because the yearly drunk-fest is the single biggest tourist attraction and revenue generator in the city. 

Here is an excellent blog on the sufferings of the Irish people, reasons for immigration, and thier subsequent loss of identity.  Also from the same author, an Irishman’s answer to common steryotypes. 

This St. Patrick’s Day, my family will be celebrating by packing up some ‘taytoes, corned beef, and soda bread made with my great-grandmother’s recipie, and having a picnic after Mass.  Remember those who cannot celebrate with us because they scrificed their lives in the name of freedom.  If you are Irish, hoist the green flag proudly.  If not, well…no one is perfect, but for one day your sad misfortune can be overlooked. 

Tiocfaidh ár lá